The Cross?

It's Chinese New Year. My Chinese church celebrates this day everyday. I don't know why they do it. I'm sure people do it for different reasons, today the reason was highlighted as that of thanksgiving.

That's new year stuff isn't it, you look back and give thanks for the previous lunar year.

After service was the usual slacking around in the sanctuary while waiting for our parents to get ready to leave. While waiting we'd take photographs and they'd join us for a brief shot before leaving together.

People love to take a photo with the cross at the backdrop. Again, I'm certain that the reasons are many and distinct.
But is the cross open to such interpretation? I know of this ornament Christians love. It's a plaque which has the words "Christ is the Lord of this house".
Perhaps that's the main reason. When we take such photos we want to look at them some time down the road and pat our own shoulders and say,
"behold, we have chosen the cross as the backdrop, surely God is with us."

But the cross? I will never forget the book The Radical Cross by Tozer. It was the one which reminded me that I should not be drawn away by the ornamental beauty of the cross as featured today- nice pendants, polished prime wood. No, Tozer reminded me that the cross is an instrument of death and execution. The cross hanging by our necks or affixed on the sanctuary wall is a reminder for us to die everyday, indeed, to put the old man to death.

Jesus' words are not in vain when he says that we are to carry our cross to follow Him daily.
The cross, the cross. Bids me come and die and find that I may truly live.

When the cross is set behind my family, this is what I think. We shall be a family of people who die daily. We shall strive to put to death the anger, bitterness, carelessness which accompanies our mutual familiarity (and the seemingly unavoidable taking of each other for granted).

I pray they think the same.